The Brightest Stars
by Ithilien Archer
Summary: Burn out the fastest. Khan's blood didn't work. Slight K/S. Crumbling S/U.
1. Chapter 1

**A/N: Inspired by a piece of fanart I saw on Tumblr. **

**Disclaimer: I do not own Star Trek or any of its wonderful characters. **

**The Brightest Stars**

He heard it before anyone else, a collective silence heavy with grief and a nameless dread that he would never name. As a Vulcan, his hearing was much better than that of his human companions. It was inevitable then, that he was the first one to hear the quiet that replaced the flurry of activity that had been going on in the trauma room... Ultimately, he was also the first out of all the senior officers beside him to realize the end of something vital.

Spock kept his expression carefully blank, not wishing to alert the others to the desperation threatening to overwhelm him_ and he was crumbling under it, breaking apart because – _Part of him wanted to run, to leave the room before his fears were confirmed. But another part of him wanted to stay and-

The doors to the trauma room slid open with a hiss and everyone but Spock- _because he already knew and did not want this to be their reality... his reality -_surged forward slightly in barely restrained anticipation. McCoy stepped into the waiting room, shoulders slumped, eyes downcast. His hands were shaking, but no one cared about that. Not now. For a long moment, no one moved_,_ no one so much as breathed... because everyone knew, just as Spock already knew.

Khan's blood had not worked.

~o~

Humans tended to seek comfort and support from others in times of distress, Spock knew this, but he had never been so intimately acquainted with the behavior prior to Jim's...to Jim's... – _It wasn't supposed to be like this!- _He stood off to the corner of the waiting room and watched as the tears flowed freely from Nyota's dark eyes as she buried her face against Scotty's shoulder while Chekov and Sulu sought comfort from one another. Across the room, McCoy held a distraught Carol in his arms as his shoulders shook with unchecked emotion. Spock -_he felt more alien than ever_- did not begrudge the humans their propensity to express emotion even more freely during times of stress, though he wished he had the same luxury. These people, his comrades would not judge, of course, if he were to reveal the _pain agony anger guilt anger anger why_ emotions that were threatening to suffocate him. But Jim was the only person that could easily get him to show emotion, the only person that he was (apparently) able to shed a tear in front of and not feel ashamed. And now Jim was...Jim was...

_No._

Spock's hands clenched involuntarily at his sides as anger flared, burning- _for the second time that day- _through his veins and everything within him rebelled against the very thought of Jim being...

_No._

Blinking to clear the haze of fury that had descended over his eyes, Spock redirected his focus to the room. He would not allow these emotions to control him, could not allow his control to fail. At least, not here. Across the room, McCoy lifted his head for the first time since he stepped out of the trauma bay. The raw anguish Spock saw in the doctor's eyes nearly broke his already crumbling control because the pain in McCoy's eyes was a reflection of the emotions that Spock was trying to suppress _to no avail._ Subsequently, it was Spock who first tore his gaze away from McCoy's. He _could not_ lose control. Not here. Not now.

He had to leave, not just because he did not wish to let the others in the room see him reveal the overwhelming emotions. But because he could not stay here. He had to get away from the emptiness on the periphery of his senses, had to get away from the still body on the trauma table ...because Jim had been alive just yesterday.

And Jim- _"you understand why I went back for you?"-_ had been his friend.

In the single moment that Spock decided to leave, Nyota appeared in front of him. She had approached him without him realizing and he found himself gazing down into her watery eyes with little more than a sort of frigid distance that would be slightly unsettling had he been aware of anything but the turbulent emotions suffocating him. "Spock," Nyota said, voice soft and compassionate and _pained_ as she reached out to embrace him. Her touch made him flinch violently, however, and he used her surprise to make his escape. He was Vulcan. He did not need human comforts. And though McCoy and Uhura both called after him, no one tried to stop him.

Spock ran out into the broken city, not knowing where he was headed but not having the capacity to care. Eventually, he slowed to a stop on a nearly empty street where he had a clear view of the area that had been damaged most extensively by the _Vengeance_.Smoke from burning buildings had begun to choke the air as waves of rescue workers worked to find survivors amidst the rubble. Spock watched them work, watched them pull out bodies both alive and dead, trying to find comfort in observation because he was a scientist and cataloging facts eased his mind. For all the time that he spent observing the scene, never once did he look up into the sky because he knew that the color would only serve as a reminder of Jim's eyes, eyes that he would never see again because...

Because Jim...

Jim was dead.

~o~

_To be continued_


	2. Chapter 2

Days of meditation had not yielded the result that he had sought. Spock, for all his logic and intelligence, could not understand why losing Jim was devastating him so. Losing his mother and his planet had been just as agonizing, but losing Jim was slowly draining the life from him. If he were prone to metaphors, Spock would liken himself to a raw, festering wound.

It had been days...days of locking himself within the dark confines of his apartment, days of avoiding the world outside, and he felt just as unstable. Tormented. And maybe he couldn't understand exactly why losing Jim hurt so much, but he knew that a part of it was that he had lost _too_ much. Because...

"_Because you needed each other. I could not deprive you of the revelation of all that you could accomplish together, of a friendship that will define you both in ways you cannot yet realize."_

He had been promised.

_They _had been promised.

And now...

The friendship that he had been promised would never become reality, would never become all it was meant to be. He would never know what his counterpart had meant, would never know how Jim would define him, how much Jim would come to mean. And the stars and planets that they would've discovered together would be left for others to find. Jim and the promise of that friendship had been the reason that Spock had stayed in Starfleet. Now that both were gone, he would resign. And just as well. He could not fathom serving under a different captain.

~o~

Nearly a week passed before anyone dared to knock on Spock's locked door. When Spock emerged from the confines of his quarters to open the door, he found Nyota waiting in his living room. For a moment, he could not understand how Nyota was in his apartment, then remembered that he had given her his access codes sometime ago. He took a moment to asses her appearance, noting the weariness on her face and the grief still lingering in her red-tinged, swollen eyes. There was a slump to her shoulders that spoke of defeat, and that stirred an uncomfortable feeling within his chest. Never in the years that he had known her had Nyota ever exhibited any sign of defeat. It was not in her nature.

"Nyota," he said softly, his voice hoarse from disuse.

"Spock," Nyota whispered into the space between them, eyes suddenly wet with fresh tears. And Spock did not know what to do. Perhaps before...before _"He's our only way we can save Kirk!" _he would have sought to comfort her, but now. He couldn't. Not yet. Not when he himself was so raw, so wounded still.

"I've been trying to get a hold of you for days. Why haven't you answered?" Her voice was quiet, exhausted, weary. Spock turned from her to look over her shoulder, face impassive. He had powered off his communicator at the beginning of his self induced isolation and had yet to turn it on.

"I did not wish to speak with anyone," he replied, turning back just in time to see the hurt flash in her eyes.

"You left me alone, Spock."

"You were in the company of your colleagues," Spock reasoned. He did not dare say "friend". It had been the last word he had said to Jim and he was trying to avoid everything that reminded him of Jim.

"_Our _colleagues," Nyota corrected with a look on her face that Spock could not decipher. "I'm not here to argue diction with you, Spock."

"Then why are you here?" A part of him knew that he was being more crass than she deserved, but for reasons he did not care to examine, he could not bring himself to care. And therein was the problem.

For a moment it seemed Nyota would leave, then anger bloomed on her face. "Because I care about you!" she cried. "I wanted to see how you were doing."

"I am fine."

"Bullshit, Spock." He turned away from her then, striding over to look out the window at the still broken city. It would take a long time for things to return to normal, if ever. The damage done to the city itself could be easily fixed. The damage done to Starfleet's reputation, however, was another matter. Still, examining the destruction before him was a more preferable than examining the turmoil within himself. More preferable than conversing with Nyota.

"Spock." He ignored the hand on his arm, the once soothing presence at his side. "Don't do this. Don't shut yourself off to me, to us. It is not healthy to grieve alone. I am here. Our friends are here. We can help each other."

"I do not need your help."

"It's me, Spock, you don't need to pretend."

"I am not pretending, Nyota." For a long while, it seemed that Nyota did not have anything more to say (or did not know what to say) and an uncomfortable silence settled over them. The last time things had been this strained between them...Jim had been alive.

_Kroikah. _

Spock closed his eyes, as if he could keep his thoughts at bay. And when he opened them, it was to Nyota's tear stained face. "Will you answer me this?" she asked and Spock tilted his head in affirmation. "What about us?" He considered her inquiry silently, eyes never straying from and never truly seeing her face. In the end, the answer came with little trepidation.

"I do not know." Spock watched as Nyota's brow furrowed in discontent and felt compelled to add, "I am sorry."

"I am too, Spock. I am too."

~o~

That night, Spock attempted to sleep for the first time in days. He had avoided it until now because he had not wanted to face the certain darkness and nightmares. Though Vulcans did not have nightmares, humans did. And he was half human. Vulnerable. Spock had climbed into bed, resigned to the fact that meditation was not providing him the rest he needed to function. Two hours later, he was woken by the echo of Jim's last plea -_ "I'm scared, Spock. Help me not be."- _ringing in his ears. Frustrated, he opened his eyes to a near dark room and startled slightly when movement near the window caught his attention.

"Computer, lights to fifty percent," he said as he sat up. The sudden light made him blink in discomfort, but the miniscule ache was immediately forgotten as his vision cleared and focused on the window. It was impossible, but... He got out of bed and stepped up to the glass, disbelief coloring every thought and movement and repressed emotion as he took in the image of a man reflected in the glass. A man with golden hair and stunning blue eyes. A man he would recognize in any universe, illusion or not.

"Jim," he whispered, too focused on the image before him to feel foolish for speaking out loud at a window. His breath misted slightly on the glass and Spock stared, transfixed, as it blurred a part of Jim's translucent face. It was only mere moments later that he reached out with impatience and wiped away the residue, the need to see Jim fully overriding whatever stupor his mind had been caught in. "Jim."

But Jim did not reply. Spock had not expected him to. He knew the Jim in the glass was nothing more than a figment of his imagination, a projection of his mind. Still. That knowledge did not stop Spock from reaching out a slightly trembling hand to press against the glass _because he needed something, _anything_, to soothe the horrible ache in his chest._ When the image of Jim reached out a hand in turn, that ache ebbed and intensified simultaneously, leaving Spock breathless.

Just as it had been when Jim died- _and Spock could do nothing then just as he could do nothing now- _a pane of glass would, it seemed, always separate them.

~o~

_To be continued. _

**A/N: Sorry for the long wait. This chapter was awfully hard to write (and I'm still not really satisfied), but I had to get it out at some point so the story could continue. Thanks for reading and more thanks for reviewing. **


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